Gaps In K-9 Deputy`s Records Explained

April 23, 1985|By James H. Tolpin, Staff Writer

Palm Beach County Sheriff`s Personnel Director Doug Phipps explained Monday why felony arrest information about a controversial sheriff`s sergeant went unreported to state law enforcement officials and why some records were missing from his file.

Phipps said that when K-9 Sgt. Thomas P. McGinn was twice arrested in Palm Beach County in 1979 on Arizona warrants for a fraud charge, he was fingerprinted and those prints were sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Phipps added that the arrest information was not entered into the FDLE computer by the sheriff`s office, because the office was not required to do so in this case.

He said the FDLE should have a copy of the fingerprints.

But FDLE officials last week said a records check on McGinn turned up nothing.

The missing arrest records stem from a charge that McGinn defrauded a Tucson, Ariz., couple by charging them $55,000 for dogs he bought in West Germany for only $5,500, Arizona prosecutors have said.

Prosecutors said they dropped the case because it would have been too expensive to bring West German witnesses to Tucson for trial.

McGinn, 56, is currently the subject of a six-month criminal investigation ordered by Gov. Bob Graham. The state inquiry, the result of a December Sun- Sentinel investigation, centers on McGinn`s $58,000 dog-buying trips to West Germany in 1983 and 1984 -- this time for the Palm Beach County Sheriff`s Office.

McGinn, who was hired as a full-time deputy in 1982, is on administrative leave pending results of the state investigation.

As for why two documents were missing from McGinn`s files at the sheriff`s office, Phipps offered two explanations.

He said one document, a prosecutor`s explanation of the Arizona fraud case, had mistakenly been kept in a ``warrants file`` instead of in McGinn`s internal affairs file.

``It should have been in the internal affairs file,`` he said.

The whereabouts of the other document, McGinn`s own explanation of the fraud charge, could not be determined, Phipps said.

But he suggested the possibility that both documents are now in the hands of state investigators, who have requested original records rather than copies for their inquiry.

He did not know why the sheriff`s office failed to list the arrest information on McGinn`s application for state certification as a deputy.

FDLE officials have said such an omission may constitute a second-degree misdemeanor.